It is now over ten years since John Tosh asked the question, “What should historians do with masculinity?”Footnote 1 The history of masculinity was then emerging as, and has since become, a burgeoning field of enquiry, with close (although not always uncontested) links with women's history, gender history, and the history of sexuality. This seemed a good point to take stock of the central themes and questions that have emerged. The articles in this special section survey the findings of historians of masculinity in Britain from the early sixteenth to the late twentieth centuries in order to assess what has been achieved and where the main gaps lie, where the field might be going, and what insights into the relationship between gender and change are yielded by a long-term chronological perspective.

The articles that follow originate from a one-day colloquium, held at the University of Sussex in September 2003.Footnote 2 Contributors with expertise in a range of different periods were invited, although it was intended that each contribution should overlap chronologically to aid the identification of key themes. Contributors were asked to reflect on four central questions. First, in what ways has masculinity (as both represented and experienced) been defined as a concept and deployed as an analytical category by historians? Second, what methodologies have been employed by historians of masculinity, and how have different approaches influenced narratives of change? Third, how does masculinity mediate relations of power and agency between men and between men and women, and, in particular, what is the relationship of masculinity to other determinants of status such as age, sexuality, ethnicity, and class? Finally, are there any discernible longer-term narratives of change in the history of masculinity, and to what extent do they fit within or challenge existing periodization? Long-standing debates in women's history (especially, although not exclusively, over the nature of women's work) have tackled its relationship with established chronologies.Footnote 3 The history of masculinity, by contrast, has yet to engage with longer-term chronologies—a project that should undoubtedly be part of its further development as a field.Footnote 4 One goal of this special issue is to suggest ways in which this discussion might begin.

This is an ambitious brief, and obviously it is not possible for each article to cover it comprehensively; contributors have responded in their own fashion. The articles that follow nonetheless offer a range of new perspectives, and a number of important themes have emerged in response to our original questions. The first concerns methodology. In response to our first two questions it is evident that both the concepts of masculinity deployed by historians and the approach to change taken in their work are closely connected to the methodologies they employ. The essays that follow recount four distinct methodological approaches. First, historians of masculinity have undertaken a gender analysis of patriarchal relations between men and women. Second, they have embarked on a social historical analysis of the ways in which concepts of masculinity interacted with contours of social status and class. Third, historians of masculinity have given their work a psychological inflection, emphasizing selfhood and the subjective experience of being male. Fourth, many have adopted a cultural historical approach, focusing on representations of manliness and masculinity. The different kinds of histories of masculinity produced by these approaches are striking. Two observations can be made: the first two methods focus on social relations of power to a greater extent than the other approaches, and the first three prioritize “experience” in ways not so apparent in cultural historical analyses. Not only do these approaches therefore pose different questions, but the differences and tensions among these social, psychological, and cultural approaches also produce a range of subjects of historical enquiry that are sometimes incommensurable. There is often a considerable breach, in other words, between work on cultural codes and representations, on men's social relations with each other and with women, and on subjective experience.

All of these approaches are taken in the pieces that follow, yet we can detect a degree of dissatisfaction with the dominant emphases in much existing work. Several contributors highlight the need for a combination of approaches to enable a comprehensive account that can engage with the questions of long-term change and established chronologies. As Alexandra Shepard and Karen Harvey both argue, for example, the adoption of a more comprehensive methodology would allow historians of 1500–1650 and of 1650–1800 to compare their findings more easily; currently, the earlier period is dominated by social histories, while the latter has witnessed the ascendancy of cultural history. While the cultural codes pertaining to refined masculinity in the long eighteenth century have been carefully analyzed, therefore, their social remit remains unclear, and so it is difficult to estimate the significance of the apparent change in dominant codes. Throughout these essays, a more comprehensive account is seen to rely in large part on a revived emphasis on men's social relations with each other and with women. This suggests that we are witnessing a retreat from analyses of meaning alone in the history of masculinity. Tosh here makes the point that cultural histories are less equipped to deal with process, suggesting that a focus on experience enables historians to draw links across time in a way that a focus on meaning does not allow.Footnote 5 Michael Roper makes the further point that a cultural approach can lead to the exclusion of the psychological experience of masculinity. His call is for the analysis of both “cultural constructions and social relations of gender, while not collapsing these various levels into each other.”Footnote 6 On a number of grounds, there is a palpable dissatisfaction with an exclusively cultural approach in the history of masculinity and a wish to complement rigorous dissections of discourse with the social and psychological.

In calling for an expanded focus on the social relations of power, it is noteworthy that these contributors have relatively little to say about masculinity and formal state or institutional politics.Footnote 7 This might originate from a desire to avoid the criticism that the history of masculinity is merely the old game in a new dress, a preoccupation with “great men” disguised as a component of the history of gender.Footnote 8 Alternatively, this might reflect the degree to which historians of masculinity have learned—not least from women's historians—how power is informal and operates outside the bounds of officialdom. Nevertheless, the centrality of the mediation of power as a topic in the history of masculinity is a key theme of the pieces that follow. Such an analysis, these writers insist, needs to regard the dominant norms of masculinity in representation not simply as discrete cultural codes, but as an integral part of social relations.

It is clear from all the contributions that the agenda for the history of masculinity needs to be more broadly expanded to include a fuller analysis of its interaction with other determinants of status, particularly class. This would aid comparisons between periods by demanding greater specificity about the social position of the subjects of analysis. It is also suggested by Shepard and Tosh in this issue that specific masculinities were becoming increasingly tied to different social groups over time.Footnote 9 If this is part of the narrative of longer-term change, then it is important that historians of masculinity are attentive to the contribution of class to male identities. Analysis is needed not only of broad cultural codes, but also of how men related to these codes in groups and cohorts (generational as well as sociostructural), as well as in terms of subjective experience.

The bulk of research into the history of masculinity has inevitably concentrated on culturally and commercially dominant groups of men, not least because records relating to them are the most prolific. What requires much more precision is analysis of the social reach of these dominant models, and a great deal more work is needed on the range of different codes available to other men (as far as they are accessible). One exception has been in the field of the history of sexuality with work on emergent homosexual identities, some of which predated and provided the inspiration for the history of masculinity as a field in its own right. This research has not only explored longer-term trajectories of change (particularly in relation to the development of homosexuality as a category of identity) but also the tensions between same-sex intimacies and constructions of a dominant, heterosexual norm.Footnote 10 Yet this only relates to one aspect of the operation of dominant codes; these will not be fully understood until we know more about the range of alternatives available to men and the processes by which they shaped and were shaped by relations of power between men and between men and women. This requires relating masculinity not only to sexuality and class but also to other differences such as age, marital status, ethnicity, and religious identity.

It will take more than a return to a social historical agenda, therefore, to underpin an analysis of the power relations intrinsic to the history of masculinity. Indeed, historians’ understanding of power has been greatly enriched by the influence of cultural history and its emphasis on the subtle ways in which power has been exercised not simply through force, money, and formal rules but also through ideas, language, and unspoken strictures. When considering masculinity and power, most historians in the field, including the contributors in this issue, have built on the theoretical foundations provided by R. W. Connell's analysis of masculinity, gender, and power.Footnote 11 Rather than simply emphasizing the diversity of masculinities, Connell explores the dynamism between them and, borrowing from Antonio Gramsci, has coined the concept of “hegemonic masculinity” to describe dominant codes. At any one time, the hegemonic form is “culturally exalted” and exists in tension with subordinate, marginalized, and—to a lesser degree—complicit masculinities.Footnote 12 The utility of the concept of hegemonic masculinity is clear from the degree to which it has been incorporated within historical analysis. There are various ways of approaching this concept, and it has been differently employed by different historians.Footnote 13 At its narrowest (and perhaps affording the greatest empirical precision) it demarcates “the masculine norms and practices which are most valued by the politically dominant class and which help to maintain its authority” rather than functioning as a blanket term to refer to the gender norms to which most men subscribe.Footnote 14 Yet at the heart of hegemonic masculinity are the processes that serve to maintain patriarchy, both in relation to deviant and cadet masculinities but primarily in relation to women, and it is this dimension that has often taken center stage in historical analysis. The concept of hegemonic masculinity also involves wider analysis of the degree to which men beyond the political elite were complicit in hegemonic codes, thereby indirectly upholding them, and this remains important to testing the social reach of dominant masculinities.

However, it is also possible that the history of masculinity has the potential to modify (rather than simply work within) this theoretical framework in the interests not only of greater analytical precision but also of furthering a more dynamic relationship between history and theory. The essays in this issue suggest that there are ways in which this theoretical framework might be reshaped on the basis of historical research. Exploration of what might be labeled hegemonic codes shows them to be highly complex, fluid, and full of contradictions. Michèle Cohen argues, for example, that gentlemanly codes of politeness in the eighteenth century were far from homogenous and riven with anxieties. More work is needed not only on the social reach of dominant codes, therefore, but also on their elasticity in order to consider the possibility of the coexistence of several different dominant codes and to review the tensions within them as well as between dominant forms and alternative modes of masculinity. Such work can challenge, or at the very least complicate, the pyramidal image of dominant masculinity stemming from the politically or socially dominant elites. Similarly, Shepard questions the extent to which all the alternative forms of masculinity were defined in relation to a “hegemonic” form by suggesting that certain masculinities were shaped independently from dominant norms rather than solely in tension with them. It is hoped that this special issue will stimulate further work on the processes—social and psychological as well as cultural—by which some forms of masculinity dominate, as well as analysis of the limits to this domination in order to achieve a fuller exploration of the gendered workings of power. Hegemonic masculinity will only be a useful category for historians if it is used to analyze relations of power, how these are subjectively experienced, and how this affects behavior rather than simply to identify dominant codes. It is possible that its use in this way will revivify the concept of patriarchy in historical analysis—not simply in terms of men's domination of women (although this is, of course, at its core), but in the broader terms advocated by Shepard, Harvey, and Tosh in this issue.

Perhaps the most ambitious request we made of the contributors was to invite them to reflect on longer-term narratives of change in the history of masculinity and to consider these in the context of existing periodization. To what extent can or does the history of masculinity challenge existing chronologies? In many ways, these essays implicitly reinforce conventional periodization. Roper, for example, reasserts the significance of the First World War as a turning point in the history of masculinity. And while Tosh stresses the roots of domesticity in the eighteenth century, “an entrepreneurial, individualistic work ethic, organized around a punishing work ethic, a compensating validation of the home, and a restraint on physical aggression” are all distinguishing features of Britain after 1800.Footnote 15 At the same time, Shepard and Harvey call for something of a reunification of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. To varying degrees, these contributors are working within rather than against the period boundaries we gave them, and in so doing they reify an early-modern/modern divide. This is reinforced by the allusions to narratives of progress that appear in several essays. Harvey, Cohen, Tosh, and Roper each discuss the notion of modernity in a history of masculinity, suggesting not that their period sees the emergence of modern man, but that the notion of modernity has been a persistent—perhaps distinctive—feature of the repeated reworking and adaptation of masculinity.

However, these essays also point to ways in which the history of masculinity is in tension with existing periodization. Questions are raised concerning the divide between early modern and modern, and this invariably arises from the potential insights of greater methodological comprehensiveness. Harvey makes the point that the peculiar compartmentalization of different male characters in the period between 1650 and 1800 results in part from the cultural emphasis of this work, one which can preclude a fruitful discussion of long-term change or continuity. Shepard makes a related point, arguing that the use of different methodologies gives an impression of change, when a combination of approaches would reveal the bigger story of continuity. Certainly, when viewing these essays as a whole, persistence is evident. Both Shepard and Tosh locate socioeconomic change as a driver of important transformations in the relationship between masculinity and social status. Both Harvey and Tosh describe new ways of understanding sexual difference and the decline of violence in their periods. Cohen sees a crisis in politeness emerging because of anxieties regarding effeminacy, yet it seems clear that there has been an ongoing negotiation between a soft and a hard masculinity. The precise balance required for appropriate masculinity changes, but there has been remarkable consistency in the process and in the anxieties inherent in this.

Herein we can identify two patterns in the history of masculinity as recounted in these essays. First, there are processes that follow a tidal or cyclical pattern, as in the shifting balance between hard and soft features of masculinity. These processes are embedded within a second, more general pattern of continuity. Certainly, there have been crisis points: Harvey identifies the years around 1740 as one, and Roper sees 1914–18 as another. Both of these examples arise from war, though there are other drivers of change: economic in Shepard and Tosh, cultural in Cohen, and experiential or psychic in Roper. Together, these essays achieve a complex account of change. Nevertheless, the emerging long-term picture is one of tidal change and deep continuity, rather than linear transformation. Complexity of this degree is to be expected if we are to pursue the methodologically comprehensive analysis of masculinity that we are advocating here. As Connell observed, “any one masculinity, as a configuration of practice, is simultaneously positioned in a number of structures of relationship, which may be following different historical trajectories.”Footnote 16 How historians perceive the relationship between masculinity and continuity or change depends not only on whether the emphasis is cultural or social, but on the unit of analysis itself—whether individuals, communities or groups, or the state. As Roper observes below, neat periodization is likely to be most strongly defied by the analysis of subjective experience, since “new” formations of masculinity are never wholly assimilated by individuals but are negotiated on the basis of earlier, often conflicting, social and cultural scripts. The close analysis of individual experience may well provide the clearest evidence of the subtleties of change.

What, then, remains for historians to do with masculinity? These essays suggest that there is still a pressing need to move from masculinity as “a set of cultural attributes to consider masculinity as a social status, demonstrated in specific social contexts” and to examine it in terms of subjective identity.Footnote 17 For John Tosh, focusing on nineteenth-century Britain, this meant producing an integrated account of masculinity in home, work, and all-male associations. The social contexts relevant to other periods may differ, but the key point remains: we need to deal not just in free-floating cultural attributes, but in grounded social or psychic contexts of experience that interact with representations. Historians of masculinity have yet to deliver on Tosh's request that we blaze a trail in combining the methods of the cultural and social historian.Footnote 18 However, historians in this field are making further steps toward a methodological comprehensiveness that will encourage historians in general to think about our subject with fresh eyes, and they are doing this by reconsidering what lies at the heart of the endeavor: change over time.